Studio Hadid Vienna

Urban Proposal

As we had to deal with the Thames Gateway as a playground for a large scale urban development, we were looking for systems which were able to fill huge areas with information. We got interested in vector fields which were on the one hand capable of reacting to a border condition but also able to correlate every single object in the field.
Our first experiments comprised several ways of how feeding information into a simple grid of cubes, resulting in highly differentiated fields. We then manipulated a single surface by the same logic, additionally feeding field - density information to create 4 simple basic typologies : Tower, Block, Housing and Park. As the whole setup is based on animation parameters we were also able to control the distribiution of these typologies. In a second step after distribiution is evaluated, animation is rewinded to further subdivide the basic surface in order to further articulate the different typologies.

Volume and Structure

After having managed to create a certain distribuiton of volume in the first semester of the project, the second terms aim was to further elaborate the actual buildings and especially their structural organisation. As we had developed a single surface proposal with a strongely unifying tendency we were looking for ways of accentuating smaller groupings within the field. We set up a system allowing us to maintain connection between the buildings in the areas of high density, forming ramified sheltered passages between them. In areas of lower density volumes getting detached, resulting in a more common street - volume relation. So we acchieved a gradient condition between component and single surface state of an urban field. The Skeleton reacts firstly on inclination of the volume, which is gradually changing in the field. This triggers a counter - movement of the whole structure which maintains stability. Secondly it reacts on the buildings exposure causing to form courtyards which enhance it and divide the volumes in sub - volumes. On the ground - level the structure is forming an circulation interface between the car - pedestrian - and toweraccess - layer.